President Trump said Monday that the U.S. recently carried out an attack on a dock area in Venezuela where drugs are loaded onto boats and trafficked across international waters, claiming that a “major explosion” had occurred.
“They load the boats up with drugs. So we hit all the boats, and now we hit the area,” Trump said at his Mar-a-Lago resort in response to a question from a reporter. “It’s the implementation area. That’s where they implement and that is no longer around.”
Trump didn’t provide details of the alleged attack, which would represent a major escalation of the U.S. pressure campaign against Venezuela, but it was the second time in the past few days he had referred to such an operation in vague terms. He also declined to say whether the military or a U.S. intelligence agency was responsible for the attack.
“I know exactly who it was but I don’t want to say who it was,” Trump said. “But it was along the shore.”
Last week Trump said that the U.S. carried out an attack on what he called “a big facility,” suggesting the strike took place in Venezuela. Days later, there has been no independent confirmation from his administration or Venezuela that such an attack took place.
Trump publicly announced the strike during a radio interview that aired Friday, though his comments were imprecise and didn’t attract much immediate attention. In the days since, the White House, Pentagon and other government agencies haven’t offered any public details or corroboration that a strike took place.
“They have a big plant or a big facility where the ships come from,” Trump said during the Friday interview with John Catsimatidis, a billionaire Republican donor who hosts a show on a New York radio station. Trump didn’t say where the alleged attack took place and didn’t explicitly identify Venezuela as the target, but the remark came amid a discussion about the Trump administration’s campaign against the country. “Two nights ago we knocked that out,” Trump said, adding that “we hit them very hard.”
In August, the U.S. began a military buildup in the Caribbean to exert pressure on Venezuela’s strongman leader, Nicolás Maduro.
Trump’s campaign against Maduro has relied on a mixture of ambiguity, public threats and insinuation to topple a regime the Trump administration has blamed for funneling deadly drugs into the U.S. It departs from the White House’s strategy over the last several months to publish videos of boat strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers.
It remains unclear what site Trump was referring to, how extensive the damage was or if there were any casualties. Whether the attack was one carried out by traditional military assets or through some other means, such as a destructive cyber operation or a covert action led by the Central Intelligence Agency, is also uncertain.
The White House National Security Council didn’t respond to requests for comment about Trump’s remarks. The CIA declined to comment. U.S. Southern Command, which oversees U.S. forces in Latin America, also declined to comment, and the Pentagon referred questions to the White House. Venezuela’s regime, which over the years has frequently warned of impending U.S. attacks and criticized Washington’s policies toward the country, hasn’t publicly announced that any attack took place. It didn’t respond to requests seeking comment.
Several U.S. officials privately expressed surprise and confusion about Trump’s comments, though they acknowledged that it was possible that a clandestine attack had occurred without the knowledge of most officials.
Over the weekend, some Venezuelan open-source analysts speculated that Trump’s comments may have been in reference to a fire that broke out on Dec. 24 at an industrial park in the western city of Maracaibo. The private petrochemicals company that runs the facility, Primazol, however, denied any connection.
“We categorically reject the versions circulating on social media,” Primazol said early Monday. The company, which distributes chemicals and feed for the agriculture industry, attributed the fire at one of its warehouses to an unspecified accident. The blaze, it added, was controlled by firefighters and didn’t result in any injuries.
The U.S. hasn’t articulated a detailed explanation of its actions toward Venezuela, though Trump and other officials have asserted that the regime has sent drugs and migrants to the U.S. in an effort to directly hurt Americans. Venezuela isn’t a major producer of narcotics, though cocaine made in Colombia—the world’s biggest source of the drug—is transported by smuggling gangs through Venezuela en route to the U.S. and Europe. Other countries in the region—from Ecuador to Argentina, Mexico to Honduras—also serve as platforms for Colombian cocaine.
Write to Dustin Volz at dustin.volz@wsj.com, Juan Forero at juan.forero@wsj.com and Kejal Vyas at kejal.vyas@wsj.com